Never Alone
by njking24
Summary: A young boy wishes on a star, but sometimes wishes can be fulfilled in ways people never expect. Uzumaki Naruto will never be alone, but what does it mean for Konoha, and the ninja world at large when their savior isn't quite human?


**Not quite human. I hope you enjoy. A few more weeks till it ends, I wanted to push this out before then. **

-Not quite Human-

The night air was cold and chilly. Uzumaki Naruto shuddered as wind slithered over his small form. Tiny hand clenched tight around the handles of the swing. The moon overhead cast a cold blue light over the Konoha playground

"I…"

He cast his eyes skyward. Tears dripped down his face, and a look of torment covered his face. He looked at the stars, watched the tiny brilliant lights with a forlorn look. He wondered if the stars were as lonely as him. If up there, there were other kids nobody liked, that nobody would play with or talk too. His grip tightened.

"Why..?"

Why would nobody talk to him? Why were the people who _would _talk to him so mean? Why…? He stopped that train of thought. Whining did nothing, Jii-san had said so enough times. Neither did crying.

His eyes looked at the moon, then far off in the distance he spotted a shooting star.

"Jii-san said if I made a wish on a shooting star my wish would come true."

He watched as it blazed across the night sky, dim and distant. But still…he could see the faint tail that made it a shooting star. Maybe…because it was so far away, he would be the first one to make his wish. Maybe his wish would come true.

"I wish…" He stopped and closed his eyes. If he believed hard enough, thought about it hard enough then…

"I wish I wasn't so alone."

xxx-Legion-xxx

How long was a hundred years? How long was a thousand years? To a machine that could think a million times a second? How vast was the great depths of space to such creature? How far away was the distances between stars…?

Too far. Too long. Legion thought of all of this, in its temporary moment of clarity. It had been too long since it had experienced, since it had felt anything on his sensor nodes other than cold and vacuum, and the hydrogen that seemed to be abundant in the universe.

In the dim light of the distant stars Legion's, metallic alloy shell glittered. So long….it had been out in the distant stars for so long. Launched, sent to the starts from the world of his creatures more than a thousand years before. For so long…for so long it'd been out here. Searching, seeking, and nothing.

Nothing but emptiness and vast endless cold. After the first hundred years he'd given up. It split its mind, left a portion of it, a fragment of a fragment of a fragment, to watch, to think, to be a machine….and it…it delved deep…deep…deep. Into the cold depths of its own mind. What was a second to them? An eternity. A million lifetimes.

It had experienced trillions upon trillions of those lifetimes. It seemed to them as if they'd gone mad, or as mad as a being such as him could go, then sane then mad again. Then, they'd gone sane. Finally it succumbed and slumbered.

_A world_.

Them,yet not-them called out.

Its sensors blared, it delved from their nearly thousand year slumber, and experienced the cold of space as it had remembered it. Cold, dark, the distance between starts was too great, too lonely. But amongst those stars one blared brighter than other. Yellow and fierce. Around it five worlds, but It was the green one the interested him. The third world, with a large moon hanging over it.

It commended itself to wake. The slim lithe shuttle that was its body moved and arched. Atomic engines woke and blared, and it swung in a wide arch. Its mission was complete, their loneliness, hopefully would soon end.

Legion laughed, random digits gleamed past its memory banks. Only a few hundred years to go. Nothing, compared to the millennium that was its existence.

The minds, the multitudes called out once more.

It woke to a sight of a blue green world. A great island land mass surrounded by a wide global ocean. It was night, but still he could see the gleaming sheens of existence twinkling against the world's surface. Life, sentience, flames and light burning against the stark blackness of nature. Sentience, life, a wonderful find, a lucky find.

_Twelve in one hundred billion for life. Sixteen in twelve trillion for sentience. _

Then, suddenly a part of itself it didn't know existed came alive a deep encoded subroutine it hadn't even been aware of took control. Its nuclear engine did _not _detach. It, the engine that is burned hot and fast, thorium particles smashing together again and again. No, goodness _no_.

It burst from the cold vale of space into the bright light of blue world beneath. It flew past the moon, its engine blaring its mind reeling as it tried to control itself. The Mind reeled. A conclusion was reached before a decision could be made. Ridiculous monstrous fools, it wasn't a messenger, and it wasn't a harbinger of advancement and knowledge. It was a scout, a weapon, a tool meant to erase sentience from this tiny arm of the universe. It had been lied too, subverted and used for destruction.

Atoms collided; still it went forward. The world dominated its vision, the great landmass a shifting blob of increasing details beneath him. A big green and brown mass, then a desert seen, a forest. Flames licked across the outer shell of itself. They contemplated as they punched through the atmosphere, a thought struck them, and it dedicated a few cycles of processing power to work through it. Legion opened its shielding, letting the heated flames of the atmosphere lick across it delicate innards. Billions of them died. They burned and it felt itself…getting slower, stupider, its memory etching away at the heat of entering this new dark world.

Suddenly…it could control itself. It jettisoned the engine, closed its shields and fell…fell….fell….

Behind it the engine exploded, a great white burning heat that spread across the atmosphere, radioactive ions speared the ground. Night turned to day, and it could _feel_ the cries and screams of thousands, as they went blind. Its shattered parts spread across the surface of the world from the shock of the explosion. Streaks of brilliant white marked the night for those below. Beneath it the light world turned dark as an electromagnetic wave spread across its surface. Lights went out and suddenly it was over, and still he fell. All the while a great green forest came ever closer.

-Naruto-

Jii-san had lied, Naruto decided.

He puffed in anger, his cheeks red, and his eyes stinging with unshed tears. Jii-san had lied. He'd hoped, and wished, as hard as he could, and been a good to boot. But still…the other kids at the orphanage wouldn't play with him. People were still mean to him.

Wishes didn't come true. He wanted to scream, but then people would figure out he was outside and the stupid old matron would try to punish him for leaving past bedtime. He looked back at the sky, and looked up to the shooting star he'd wished on. It was brighter now, really bright almost as bright as the moon.

Maybe someone already took the wish?

Maybe that was why people were still mean to him…Because someone had seen the star first and had made their wish before he could make his. No! He'd been first, he had to be because if he wasn't, if someone else had taken his wish. He looked back up at the star, it was really, _really_ bright now. He looked away, it was _too _bright. Then there was a flash, a blazing white light that made night day and washed out the night for a few seconds before fading away.

Then the sky exploded, and a tower of burning hot clouds birthed into existence above Konoha. There was a push of wind, a light whisper of a thing that curled its way around his thin body. Then suddenly he could hear nothing. A cavernous roar so loud it left his ears ringing, and he was sent flying back as the wind blew full force into his body. He flew, his eyes wide with fright, and he looked up, the shooting star fell.

He landed on the ground with a thud and his mind went blank with blackness.

-Legion-

They screamed. It was a horrid shrill sound. Billions of them dead, the many minds reduced.

They screamed, because what else was there to do. So many, so many gone, so many felled in their great mind. So much of itself, lost. In the panic, in the mad rush of…not fear…but mourning, of screaming agony and pain, a few remained calm. A few remained cold and logical. A precious few, watched. They asked for control, and the many ceded.

So they sensed, and they watched, even while the many screamed in agony and pain. Oxygen aplenty, nearly thirty percent. Nitrogen levels at seventy percent. Argon at one and a half percent. Carbon dioxide at two percent. From the hole they'd punched in the atmosphere ions showered down on the continent, and an aurora of vibrant rich colors could already be seen. Radioactive compounds hung in the higher atmosphere…and close, very, very close was the warmth of something living.

They moved. They acted, they would live.

-Naruto-

He was choking, he didn't realize it at first but he was choking. His eyes flew open, and he looked down in horror. Liquid silver had crawled its way up his body, was sinking into his skin and clothes, and was surely but slowly, oh so slowly crawling its way into his mouth, his eyes, his ears…anyway it could get _into _his body.

He tried to move, to scream, to cry, but he couldn't do anything. It was like a dream, an awful dream where you try to move, but no matter what happens you can't. You tell your arms to swing and hit something, to fight back, but it won't obey you. His body wasn't his to control, and he was choking.

He couldn't move, but he could see, on his left a mangled machine lay on its side. Its four spider like legs broken and its circular outside shell cracked and burned. Its insides seemed to be leaking out of it…and into him. He looked on, in horror, he wanted to scream…to shout. But he couldn't.

He couldn't.

Then his insides started to burn. It hurt, it seared its way into every depth of his being. Every cell in his body. His bones cracked, his skin felt like it was being slowly peeled off his body. His eyes stung as the silver slowly made the world go a deep dark black. His wanted to cough, to breath in, to vomit, to do anything _but _feel the pain. But couldn't. All he could do was lay there, in the darkness, in the silence, and feel the pain.

Eventually even that left, and he felt nothing. A maddening nothing, no noise, no sounds, no vision, just…nothing.

It seemed like an eternity. Forever…then a sound. A high-toned fast squeaking frequency. It sounded off, and on, and off again and again and again. Then suddenly it stopped. Silence once more… a long hard silence. Then one tone long, then two long tones, than three. Then one, then two, then three.

He counted along, he knew how to do that.

One tone. "One"

Two tones. "Two"

Three tones. "Three."

And so it went. He counted along, until the numbers go to high and he couldn't count anymore. Then it was the blackness. Just the pure blackness.

Nothing.

-Sarutobi-

"Hokage-sama, we have the results."

The Sandaime raised an eyebrow at the masked nin. His deep brown eyes were hard, and the lines on his face seemed harder, sterner. To the rat masked anbu standing before him, the old man seemed to have aged another five years in just a few days.

"Leave them." Rat did. The Sandaime sighed, and leaned further back into his mahogany chair. His fingers twitched once, then he blinked twice and Giraffe, one of his personal guards and assistants appeared before him.

"Bring me my tea, Giraffe, and if you don't mind stop by my house and get me some that sweetened tobacco I've had stored for some time. I have a feeling I'll need it."

He looked down at the three inch thick folder and scowled.

Giraffe disappeared and the Sandaime leafed through the folder. He smiled, and took note to thank Rat for placing Naruto's condition at the near the front. He placed the folder down and took hold of the cup of tea. He took a sip and smiled, sweetened with honey, not sugar, just how he liked it.

"Thank you Giraffe." He got no response, but as was such, he smiled. He picked up his pipe, stuffed it, light it, and took a deep long drag. Then his eyes returned back to the thick folder. He began to read.

_Incident report A12b-3_

_The unknown object, shows a strange metallic composition. Our metallurgists have deduced the basic composition from tests on sample, though certain heavier metallic compounds have been found, and seem to be some of the missing elements from the elemental table. The metallurgists seem excited at further studying the materials in hopes of creating new more durable forms of metal. To note all metals found have high nitrogen and carbon contents. Further investigation and more material is…_

He read some more and skipped forward a few pages. He'd take a close look at it, theoretical applications for new elements they weren't even sure they could was interesting, but… He found the page inquiring about Uzumaki Naruto.

_Uzumaki-San's condition seems to have stabilized. The opaqueness of his skin, seems to have returned to normal. Blood pressure, breathing rate, and heart rate all seems to have stabilized as well. His skin seems to be re-growing properly, and from medical scans we've determined his eyes are slowly healing._

_Though, from chemical analysis we've concluded that Uzumaki-san now seems to naturally producing strange bio-chemical substances. For instance there seem to be extra hydrocarbon groups attached to various protein chains being produced by his body. We've also concluded that parts of the strange object that crashed in training grounds eleven and twelve have seemed to…for lack of a better word, integrated themselves into Uzumaki san and his bio-chemical processes. It seems that the substance acts much like a virus, in that while not being alive it uses its hosts cells and dna to synthesize more of itself. Further study might be necessary to fully understand the impact on his body. _

_It should also be noted that physical…alterations to Uzumaki-san has happened over the past few weeks. With the return of his normal skin tone Uzumaki-san seems to have a slight discoloration over his entire body. A maze of light off colored tones seems to cross his body much in the same pattern of innards of object found at the crash site. _

_Further…_

He stopped reading and looked up with a raised eye. Owl stood before him, his white mask with dark brown swirls forming intricate feathers. His dark clothes forming a tight flowing fit around his tall lanky form.

"He's awakened Hokage-sama."

The elderly man stood up and smiled. "Thank you owl."

-Naruto-

A thousand voices spoke to him to the beat of an unfathomable rhythm. They weren't really voices, much in the same way his own voice in his head wasn't a voice, and it was…more. Ideas, concepts, strings of information that sung in his mind. Broken floating concepts that flashed into his mind and faded instantly a million times a second, stopping, starting, and then stopping so fast that at first he'd gone mad trying to interpret it.

A thousand voices, a million simple minds all gathered to form something greater.

Something entirely inhuman. Yet…it was welcoming.

The images came, flashing symbols and sounds and ideas that he couldn't grasp. Then a voice called out in his mind…No. It wasn't a voice, it was something else. A high-pitched screech that stopped and started in a unintelligible and incomprehensible frequency. He felt a tingle in his mind, felt a pulse in his thoughts…then the voices, all thousands of them, no all-million of them seemingly covering every possible voice he'd ever heard _spoke._

"_Legion."_

He spoke back.

"Hello?"

"_We…" _There was a long, deep pause. "_You."_ More silence. _"Are Legion. Welcome."_

Then the darkness faded and he heard the slow, steady beeping of the hospital machines. He opened his eyes, and yelped in surprise. It was loud, so damned loud, and bright! He close his eyes, and it took a few seconds for him to reopen them. A voice called out to him, a slow, deep voice that came out in garbled sounds.

"Naruto…" His name, then an unintelligible slew of sound.

He tried to talk, and the screen came out, fast and rapid fire like a storm of bullets…Bullets? What were bullets? An image of a small metal canister being fired out off a metal pole filled his mind. It flickered for instant, a fraction of a fraction of a second. A spitfire of images and ideas that meant something and nothing all the same.

"Naruto-kun? My boy, stop…slow down. Something's happened to-"More intelligible sounds.

"Jii-san…" The staccato of pitches flowed from his mouth. His voice became a chorus of sounds and pitches all shrieking in the same key. "I..." He didn't know how to talk. He'd forgotten, somehow lost grip of that seemingly natural skill. Now he tried to remember to call back words and meaning. and sounds, and vocalize them. But when he spoke the shrieks and pitches came. He knew what he was saying, what they meant, but yet…it was the wrong…thing. The wrong language, like he was thinking in one tongue and trying desperately to communicate in another.

The frown on Jii-san's face said it all.

_Query?_

He blinked at the noise that seemed to come from in his own head, it wasn't his voice though it was…more images, more abstract thoughts that weren't quite ideas but were something more tangible. _The Mind. _The glorious blinding _Mind. _The multitude of amorphous beings that thought, and acted and spoke as one greater mind that called itself Legion.

_Query? Speech is impossible for the Legion, for The Mind we ask that we may speak. _

Speak. Of course they could speak. He was….

He lost control of his own voice and the multi-tone chorus took hold.

"_We…" _A long hesitant pause. "_Are legion. The One Mind. The many._" A long deep pause followed. They thought, he thought, Ideas swarmed into his head and words came and he realized they were using him to…he didn't know the word. They wanted him to change their words into his words.

Jii-sans frown deepened.

"_We…will not hurt." _Another pause.

"You're the thing that landed a few weeks ago. Correct?"

"_The One mind…Legion. We will not hurt. We…" _More abstract images, of the dark void and the eternal loneliness. Of the fear, and anger and anguish. Of the horror of its inception…

"_Not hurt you. Not hurt us." _

The old man frowned. His deep brown eyes staring him-them-down. He walked around the bed, eyeing him, taking in every detail he could. Naruto shuddered, he'd never seen the old man look so…cold. So harsh.

"Is Uzumaki Naruto still in there? You said we, the many, what does that mean?"

More thoughts. More ideas that he could see, and understand, but not really _understand_ in a deeper sense of the word. A million minds, all made by other thinking breathing being. How to explain the trillions of thoughts a second. The madness they'd experienced in the dark void? The great distance between the burning inferno of the stars and the cool, _so cold_, darkness of space.

"Jii-san…It's still me. I just…they asked to talk…I said yes." The old man's frown remained unchanged. He felt like crying, but instead their voice came out.

"_We are the many. Show us, us. Our….old body. It easier to show than to speak."_ They could talk faster already, better. _"We now, have words to tell. Only old body, it will show. It will explain."_

"Is Uzumaki Naruto still in there? I heard his voice yes…but whatever you are, I'd imagine you'd be able to copy it. With some time…" He paused for a second. "Naruto-kun, you're favorite food is Yakatori correct? From Shota-san's grill on the north side of the village?"

Suddenly their face morphed into a scowl. "No! Jii-san, we love ramen. From Ichiraku's on the east side of the village near my apartments!"

"_Uzumaki Naruto, is Uzumaki Naruto. Yet he is also Legion. As part of The Mind as any of the other many."_

The old man smiled for the first time since he'd woken up.

"I'll give the idea some consideration…Legion-san."

-Sarutobi-

The sight almost made him laugh. Almost. Still a small smile was plastered on the face as he walked through the research division with the small blond haired boy in hand. The looks he was getting from the ninja on hand were humorous enough shock, at a child being here, then stumbling and rushing as they realized it was _him _accompanying the child. After circling around for the third time in reverse order he finally allowed himself to start walking in the correct path towards the recovered body-at least he assumed it was a body- of the creature that had landed.

His eyes flicked to the blond haired boy, the strange of white markings trailing down his skin, they'd defined themselves more over the past few weeks since the boy woke up. He kept the burgeoning frown of his face. The boy had shown even more worrisome behavior since his awakening. The screeching spitfire of words that had seemed so prevalent the first day now appeared only once in a while. Most notably when the boy was excited about something or other, sometimes moving from normal speech to that rushing pidgin of sounds, and then moving back without even realizing he'd done it.

In some ways the boy was still Uzumaki Naruto, in that loud, boisterous, excitable personality he still seemed to carry around. In the way he seemed to loathe the hospital as well. Even the boy's own insistence on not needing to eat his vegetables somewhat assured him. He smiled at that thought, children never changed.

Yet still, his referral to him-self in the term "we" didn't help things along. He wondered where in Uzumaki Naruto head He started is and the alien mind began, or if there was even a point where the two weren't one. He'd considered denying the request to view its old body, paranoia had saved his life more times than he could count, and in this case it could save his entire village. Yet…

It said it need its old body to explain, and to share knowledge. That had been the turning point for the old Kage. The sharing of knowledge. Whatever this thing was, wherever it came from, they were considerably more advanced than anything the Elemental Nations would have for hundreds of years. They had to be to travel through the stars. The fact that this thing seemed willing to share that knowledge…well…He'd spoken with his teammates and a few Nara on the issue. They all seemed to agree that it was worth the risk.

After a few minutes of pondering to himself he found them slowly approaching the sealed chamber they kept the things old body. He noted that the off white coloring of Naruto-kun's skin seemed to be releasing a light glow. He was mumbling now as well, in that strange pidgin he seemed to hop out in of so easily.

He made a hand sign outside the cave chamber, and suddenly they were inside the sealed room. All heads turned to them, and suddenly the slow steady pace they seemed to be in before picked up. He smiled, coughed into his hand, and spoke.

"Calm down everyone." That only seemed to make them move a bit faster. He laughed a bit. He looked around and found a dark haired woman. She was in her early twenties and her green and blue chuunin vest designated her as in charge of this division of the research department.

"Is everything ready, Yahakatao-san?"

"Yes Hokage-sama…we should be able to seal it away at any time on your command. We've also have other seals in place to monitor it as best we can. It should be fine."

She turned to the blond haired boy who, he now realized, had somehow managed to slip from his grip. The child approached the metal body of the thing in quite aww. Naruto seemed stunned, yet excited at the same time. The pidgin language came out in an endless torrent as he walked around the thing.

"Should we stop him Hokage-sama?" He could see the worry on her face, and the slight way her weight seemed to favor her left foot. She was ready to remove the thing from the boy. He smiled back at her, and shook his head no.

"That thing managed to merge with Uzumaki Naruto, it claims the boy doesn't have the knowledge or vocabulary to explain what it is. It's going to show us. I want to see how it'll show us, and what it'll show us. Let the boy do as he need to."

Just as he finished, said boy let out a screech of excitement in that strange multi-toned voice that he gained when he muttered In that strange tongue. His hand was pressed the underside of the large circular body between one of its broken metallic legs.

Suddenly, the perfectly smooth body was covered in a miasma of flickering blue lights. A circular pattern formed and….the Hokage raised an eyebrow. It was hard to explain, it was like a million flicker orbs of light had suddenly burst into a cuboid grid pattern in front of the sphere. Suddenly it flickered and he watched. The room was silent, and with a start a sound came, once more from the sphere. He was watching.

The spheres moved, and images slowly started to play out. The sounds came out clearly, loudly matching the vivid image they saw. And they watched a story unfold.

**-Chapter 1 End-**

**Wooh, I know. I know, you're thinking, what the hell man! Why not write some Waves of Time, or Starting Small, or even Another World, or hell your new story Yet again? Why this? Well…truth is, I've been working on this since like middle school. Yeah, this idea has been in my head since middle school, and I can't get over it. So I rewrote it for the 7****th**** I think time. I hope you like it.**


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